The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom & Their Lover. Victoria Janssen

astonishment, he then pulled the duke’s buttocks apart and began to lick around his hole. She thought he might have dipped into the hole with his tongue, but was not sure.

      “Enough!” said the duke, and began to fuck Marrine again. Vilmos kept his hands on his master’s rear, his expression blank. When the duke stopped again and called his name, he worked two fingers into the duke’s hole. The rest of his hand jerked, as if he simulated a spurting prick.

      The duke resumed his fucking, but this time Vilmos did not stop what he was doing. After a moment or two, the duke let out a cry such as Camille had never heard from any man and sped up his thrusting. His face had reddened, and sweat dripped from the ends of his hair. She watched Vilmos’s hand, and identified an upward stroke that elicited the duke’s pleasured cries.

      The duke came very quickly. That much, Camille thought wryly, had not changed. She was impressed, though, with what Vilmos had done. She had never seen such a thing before, and if she had been watching any man but her husband, she might have found it arousing to see a man penetrated as if he was a woman, and to know that his pleasure came from the hands of his penetrator. The idea of that sort of control excited her in a way she was sure the duke had not intended. She had momentarily forgotten her predicament.

      It appeared the show was over. Marrine was licking the duke’s prick clean, and Vilmos was washing his hands and surreptitiously rinsing his mouth with wine. Camille would have appreciated a glass herself. Vilmos brought a cup only to the duke, however.

      “Your Grace,” Arno said softly. “Allow me to remove this.”

      For a moment, she thought he meant her robe; then she saw his hand on the fur-lined cuff which bound her arm to the chair. She nodded, hopefully with aplomb. Arno set to work on one arm and Kaspar on the other. They both completely ignored the activity on the other side of the room, which she supposed made sense, as they were eunuchs. For the first time, she wondered if any sexual pleasure at all was possible for them. They still had, she understood, their pricks, though their sacs were empty.

      When her bindings were entirely removed, she stood, careful to let the blood flow back into her knees before she attempted to straighten. She said, in her most commanding voice, “Do you have further need of me, Your Grace?”

      Her husband had drizzled wine from Marrine’s breasts to her thighs, and was currently snuffling in her quim while she swatted at his flanks with a handful of the roses. He waved a negligent hand and said, “Vilmos, take her to her rooms and secure the door. Bring her back to me next week, and we shall see if she is more amenable.” Then he returned to his concubine. She was forgotten. Camille felt cold. The duke’s treatment of her made it obvious that he no longer cared if she became pregnant or not. She was only a toy to him now, and one of which he would soon tire.

      Her time was rapidly running out.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      By the time Henri finished mucking out Guirlande’s stall and carting the soiled straw to compost, the moon was up. He stopped midway back to look at the stars.

      Even a stableboy could be dazzled by the glory of the night sky. His heart slowed and swelled with awe. He couldn’t touch the stars, but he had touched the duchess.

      He sighed and trundled his smelly wheelbarrow back to the yard. He needed to stop thinking of his afternoon with the duchess, stop making it into more than it had been. She had used him. Hadn’t she?

      He couldn’t deny that, secretly, he had wanted her for years. Desire had slowly replaced his earlier fantasies that she’d singled him out for equestrian training because he was somehow special. Now the danger was past, he didn’t even mind she’d used him. There was no other way he could have had her.

      How bovine he’d been, blurting out that he would help her escape. As if she would ever need him to rush to her rescue. Her maid was loyal, and her eunuchs. There would be others, too, greater than a stableboy. He wondered if any of them cared for her at all.

      He took a last walk down the row of his charges, petting the noses of those horses still awake and eyeing him over their stall doors. He would have to be up early to school Tulipe in the ring, and Lilas needed to be conditioned on the longe line. Guirlande, he sensed, would be coming into season soon, and possibly Tonnelle also. That would mean a trip to one of the far-flung breeding barns and, for him, relative luxury. Not only would he be caring for far fewer horses, he wouldn’t be assigned odd jobs, as when he was easily in view of the stable- master and his chief grooms. He wouldn’t be catching the associated random blows. Even better, the breeding barns were built in past days of unimaginable affluence, for a duke who had loved his horses, so the hayloft where Henri slept would rival—well, he had used to think it would rival the very bedchamber of the duke, but today he had been disabused of that notion. It didn’t matter. Small luxuries were easier to enjoy.

      He felt again the weight and smoothness of her dress as it sagged from his hands, inhaled the flowery perfume she’d worn in the crook of her neck. While he, Henri, stank of horse sweat and dung. She hadn’t flinched from his hands upon her. Still, he hadn’t dared touch her face, or kiss her lips. He wished now he had. Then he would feel they’d known each other, however briefly.

      It was childish of him to expect so much. She was as far above him as the stars, and old enough to be his mother. It was true many men took brides much younger than themselves, so perhaps it wasn’t so awful. Why not the reverse? He imagined her in his imaginary cottage, gorgeously gowned, rocking a cradle, and he laughed. More likely he’d be rocking the baby and changing nappies.

      He turned away from Tonnelle and headed out the double doors, into the night. His body hummed. He couldn’t sleep yet.

      It was late, but not too late for a bath. Perhaps, afterward, he would indulge in something more. The Dewy Rose specialized in all sorts of relaxations, and he never spent much of his paltry wages, sleeping as he did amid the horses. Perhaps he would share some of his money with the girls of the Dewy Rose. He could afford one of the cheaper whores. For an hour, perhaps. He always allowed himself the possibility, though in the end he usually decided to save his money, knowing that if he was frugal, his own cottage would be real that much sooner.

      He walked into the town, principal seat of the duchy. The streets were more active than the estate had been. Drunken revelers spilled from a tavern near the gate, coaches rattled over the cobbles, and a raucous game of dice devoured an entire alley. Most of the street whores ignored him. He looked like empty pockets. He was just as happy to be on his way unmolested. It hurt him to look at the streetgirls’ eyes.

      The Dewy Rose, a massive building of rough gray stone, towered three stories over the neighbors on either side, its white windowsills scrubbed clean daily and the shingled roof trimmed with decorative strips of copper. Its baths were cheap and popular. It cost extra, though, to climb the stairs with one of the girls, and cost considerably more for one of the young men Madame Hubert had imported from a desert land far to the south. He had glimpsed them once or twice, on his way to the baths: slender men with flawless skin and dark outlining around their eyes, wearing only long silken drawers, layers of necklaces and silver rings on their bare toes. The duchess might have bought herself one of those, through an intermediary. Except their skin was too dark for any child of theirs to pass as the duke’s.

      Torches crackled at either side of the grand front entrance. Henri shoved open the carved oaken door and was confronted by a giant elderly eunuch wearing a black robe. He silently held out one slablike palm, and Henri laid a quarter-copper there. The eunuch’s hand closed over it; with his other hand, he jerked a thumb at the corridor beyond. Manic laughter swelled from the house’s interior, mingled with the clink of goblets and knives and, faintly, a twinging harp.

      The common room’s doors were folded back to allow heat to escape, and to let the bath’s patrons have a preview of the evening’s entertainment. Henri had meant to pass straight by. He could not resist a look, though, to see if his memories of the room’s appointments compared ill or favorably with those of the duchess’s.

      He